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The famous power breakfast at the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue is relocating to a temporary space because the hotel is scheduled to close for renovations next year. A farewell celebration was held on Wednesday.Credit Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

When the next history book about New York City is written, the chapter on people and power will almost certainly require a section covering something that began in 1975 and ended on Wednesday: The modern Manhattan power breakfast.

That term, power breakfast, may not have originated at the Loews Regency Hotel, but for politicians, lobbyists, media personalities and business executives through five mayoralties and seven presidencies, the Regency was the place to see and be seen. That is why the index of that history book will probably say, “See also: ‘Movers and shakers.’” Read more…

Driving a Car in Central Park

“Go through the park,” Dudley Moore slurs to his chauffeur in the 1981 film “Arthur,” his character giddy and drunk and in need of simple and profound pleasure. “You know how I love the park.”

I’ve always felt the same way: Driving through Central Park is one of the true guilty pleasures of living and driving in New York City.

Say you find yourself slogging up Avenue of the Americas, which ends — as well it should, that confounded, car-congested corridor — at 59th Street, the southern border of Central Park.

If it’s between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on a weekday, you’re in luck: Drive right in, and you are beamed, “Star Trek”-style, from the doldrums of Midtown traffic into a bucolic, meandering, charming thoroughfare of trees and lawns and lakes.

Pull into the curving entrance lane, and suddenly you are in the hush of the park, gliding beneath a verdant canopy of tree boughs, far from Manhattan’s maddening grid of vehicular frustration. Read more…

Earl Wilson/The New York TimesRaymond Velasquez, atop the Times Square traffic signal on Tuesday, also faces lesser charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct.

One day after scaling a traffic light in Times Square — and remaining there, rapping, exercising and clogging several blocks of Midtown traffic for nearly two hours — Raymond Velasquez, 34, was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court Wednesday afternoon on a misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment, as well as lesser charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct.

“I won’t come down unless Alicia Keys comes outside to see me,” Mr. Velasquez told officers, according to the criminal complaint. Ms. Keys had performed in Times Square on ABC’s “Good Morning America” earlier Tuesday morning.

While atop the traffic light apparatus, Mr. Velasquez told police officers he was searching for his lost son, according to the complaint, which cites Officer Peter Rogers of the Police Department’s 14th Precinct. Then, around 5:40 p.m. Tuesday, Mr. Velasquez admitted his actions were “just a publicity stunt for my music,” the complaint said. Read more…

“You have to go through the whole explanation,” said Dayna Paulino, an office manager. “That was definitely the most frustrating part.”

Since news broke that the H & H Bagels store on Broadway and West 80th Street would be closing — by next Monday, the employees said — H & H Midtown Bagels East has borne the brunt of the public concern. There have been more than 100 telephone calls from people who are confused about the relationship between the stores. Namely, they think there is one. Read more…

At Home With 'Mr. Mummy'

The ancient Egyptians had their tombs — well-decorated spaces that contained belongings for the afterlife. Bob Brier has his three adjacent apartments in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.

“People ask me what I’ll do with all this stuff when I die,” Mr. Brier said recently. “I say: ‘I’m an Egyptologist. I can take it with me.’ ”

His “stuff” is a staggering collection of what he calls Egyptomania: thousands of objects of all sorts relating to ancient Egypt, all amassed, and tastefully displayed, in those three adjacent apartments, in a high-rise building just off the Henry Hudson Parkway.

Mr. Brier, 67, a world-renowned Egyptologist who has spent his life researching mummies around the world — earning him the nickname Mr. Mummy — has for 35 years been an avid collector of research materials, artifacts and just about anything Egypt-related. It is a collection that runs the gamut, from rare artifacts to dime-store kitsch, from authentic mummy parts to pop culture merchandise. Read more…

For a quarter century, Jewish children have hungrily followed the kooky adventures of the Shpy, the adventurous hero of The Moshiach Times, a family-friendly magazine that is published six times a year in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. (Think Highlights, but Jewish.)

With a closet full of disguises and more gadgets than 007, the Shpy volunteers his services when innocent people or ancient traditions are imperiled. He escapes from a giant Mixmaster when investigating a case of stolen hamantaschen, and thwarts a mysterious bee infestation that nearly spoils the fall holiday of Sukkot. In one installment, he invents a repellent to keep the sinister Yetzer Hora at bay, complete with a catchy slogan: “Let us Shpray.” (The softening of the S, when the Shpy shpeaks, so to speak, is meant to evoke Humphrey Bogart.) Read more…

Barbara Sax/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesYes, they’re adorable. But how close do you really want to get to a skunk?

This week, City Room reported that skunks have taken up permanent residence in Upper Manhattan and are starting to make their way south. We asked readers to tell us about their encounters with the stinkers. Here, some skunk tales of the city.

“A few nights ago, my apartment in Washington Heights was undergoing renovation, and I was staying with a friend who lives on Bennett Avenue. I stayed in the apartment while she went to the first floor to do her laundry. Several minutes later, I received a hysterical phone call: ‘There is a skunk in the laundry room!’ I rushed downstairs, and sure enough there he was behind the machines. The super eventually came to rectify the matter, but I could not help but smile and marvel at the appearance of our little guest. I’m oddly comforted by their presence.”— AlexRead more…

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesYoga, music and picnicking, perfect together: Jim Graseck warms up as Angela Botta demonstrates a stretch at the concert series at Richard Tucker Park on Wednesday.

On a narrow 0.051-acre patch of Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon, Maury Tannenbaum leaned back in his chair.

The brakes on the M11 bus to his left squealed. Cabbies honked to his right. Construction vehicles rumbled by. But Mr. Tannenbaum, 73, is a retired surgeon who grew up in the Bronx, which is another way of saying he has learned a thing or two about drowning out distraction and focusing on what matters.

He sat in the shade of London Plane trees in a 138-year-old park off Broadway, listening to a classical guitarist from Japan play songs written in Spain to a small crowd of New Yorkers and tourists that included an unemployed librarian from Queens, a West African newspaper vendor, tattooed construction workers, bearded homeless men and a businesswoman wearing a pearl necklace. His wife, Gloria, sat next to him as the bronze bust of Richard Tucker, the Brooklyn-born opera star for whom the park is named, looked on — a great tenor, setting the tenor.

“You’re outside,” Mr. Tannenbaum said. “You got a breeze. It’s just a New York thing. I don’t know what he’s playing, but it’s very relaxing.”

Richard Tucker Square is not a square at all, but a triangle, at one of the busiest intersections in Manhattan, Broadway and 66th Street, across from Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. Every Wednesday this summer, starting July 7 and ending Sept. 1, free concerts are held at the park from noon to 2 p.m.Read more…

Corey Kilgannon/The New York TimesEnrico Miguel Thomas at the temple of his muse, the 72nd Street subway station.

“He’s the Rembrandt of 72nd Street!” a yellow cab driver yelled at a man on the sidewalk sketching the 72nd Street subway station last Wednesday on the Upper West Side.

Not quite: Rembrandt did not use city subway maps as his canvases. But the Rembrandt of 72nd Street does: Enrico Miguel Thomas, who can be found nearly every day outside the station.

Mr. Thomas uses Sharpie markers to make line-heavy, perspective-rich sketches of stations and passengers. His canvas is always a city subway map, which are offered free of charge at station booths. Read more…

This week, Matthew Bakkom, the editor and creator of “New York City Museum of Complaint,” a collection of 132 letters written to the mayor of New York from 1751 to 1969, will responded to readers’ questions about communiqués of dissatisfaction over the course of the city’s evolution.

We are no longer accepting questions for this feature.

Selected from the municipal archives and presented chronologically, the letters in “The New York City Museum of Complaint” address a range of issues, from dead animals in the street to swindles, capitalism, corruption, civil rights, adventuresses, bad luck, broken hearts, noise and other people. These are The core strength of this collection lies in its peculiar ability to capture the spirit of the city as defined by its critics and crusaders. Read more…

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